England's preparations for and involvement in next month's World Cup finals, to be staged in China, have played havoc with the fixture list for the opening six weeks of the Women's Premier League season.

Yesterday's start to the 2007-08 campaign featured only three of the originally scheduled six matches as the players in the England squad, instead of kicking off the new campaign with their club sides, were flying to Macau to acclimatise for the finals.

The five clubs - Arsenal, Everton, Chelsea, Leeds and Doncaster - who between them provide the squad's 21 players, will have no matches until at least September 23 and possibly October 7, depending on how far England progress in the tournament.

Tessa Hayward, the coordinator of the Premier League, said: "It's been a logistical nightmare and it means there will have to be a lot of midweek fixtures to try and get back on schedule as quickly as possible. We'll be dating as many of the outstanding games as possible for midweek and, to help the clubs in terms of travelling arrangements, we'll be trying wherever we can to fit local derbies into those midweek slots."

The league usually has only two full midweek programmes but there are already four planned before the Christmas period and, with a further 27 matches to be rescheduled, there should be at least as many in the second half of the season.

Though yesterday's league games were bereft of England players the Blackburn Rovers striker Katie Anderton, overlooked for the World Cup squad, scored five goals in her team's 6-0 win against Cardiff City

There were defeats for both of the newly promoted clubs, Watford going down 1-0 to Birmingham City and Liverpool losing 4-3 at Bristol Academy after pulling back a three-goal deficit. Kerry Bartlett's last-minute hat-trick goal clinched the victory.